Controversial e-mails written by well-respected Boulder climate scientists that were posted online last week do not cast doubt on the researchers' peer-reviewed papers on global warming, according to the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Hackers breached a computer server at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England and published about 1,000 e-mails -- some of which mention, were written by or were sent to prominent Boulder researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of Colorado and NCAR.

The vast majority of e-mails, which date back to 1996, appear benign. But some correspondence from Tom Wigley and Kevin Trenberth, senior scientists at NCAR, have drawn ire from people who are concerned that climate scientists have tried to stifle dissenting views about global warming and manipulated data to support their agendas.

Rich Anthes, president of the University Corp. for Atmospheric Research, which manages NCAR, said he does not believe the e-mails prove any kind of malfeasance.

"E-mails, by their nature, are quickly and sometimes thoughtlessly written and therefore open to misinterpretation and misrepresentation," he said. "It's unfortunate that this illegal hacking and invasion of privacy has generated such headlines and bad will. It doesn't alter the fundamental scientific fact that emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are changing our climate."

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Trenberth has already defended his e-mails in both the Camera and the national media as taken out of context.

Some of the concern that has surfaced over the last several days has been based on whether the researchers' comments erode the validity of the science in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report, which will form the foundation for upcoming policy discussions in Copenhagen.

Climate-change skeptic Myron Ebell, director of Energy and Global Warming Policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Reuters that the e-mails will speed the end of "global warming alarmism" and that research that has been relied on for official reports "is now very suspect."

The e-mails written by Wigley that have caused the most Internet buzz include a note to Phil Jones, director of the British Climatic Research Unit. That note discusses how to reduce a "warming blip" in sea-surface and land temperature data during the 1940s. Wigley suggests, "If we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean -- but we'd still have to explain the land blip."

Critics have seized on the e-mail as evidence that climate data have been intentionally manipulated. But many scientists argue that correction of historic temperature data is not only routine but necessary, since the tools used to collect temperatures over time have changed drastically, affecting the data's accuracy. Sea-surface temperatures, for example, have been taken over the years by hauling up water in everything from wooden buckets to canvas canisters.

Wigley said Tuesday night that the e-mail reference to reducing the blip was really just "short hand" for using a type of correction outlined in another peer-reviewed paper published in Nature in 2008.

"This e-mail was directed to Phil Jones only, and Phil knew exactly what I was talking about," Wigley said. "It does not at all refer to making some arbitrary correction to existing data in order to make such data fit some preconceived ideas about global warming."

For James White, director of CU's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, the e-mails do not shake his faith in the authors' scientific findings. White was not mentioned in any of the stolen e-mails.

"When we publish our results, we go through a peer-review process," White said. "Whatever the public thinks about the private comments that people e-mail back and forth, the fact is that the science has gone through a very rigorous peer-review process."

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